ParaScale offers cloud storage software

Posted on March 31, 2009

-- Startup ParaScale is now offering a standalone software product capable of creating public or private storage clouds for a starting price of less than $10,000.

The ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS) software, which is available now for download from ParaScale's website, uses standard Linux servers and clustering software to turn up to hundreds of commodity servers into a file repository with massive capacity and parallel throughput.

ParaScale is targeting its software at managed service providers looking for ways to build different types of public clouds and offer a variety of storage cloud services, and at enterprise customers who want to get their feet wet with cloud technology by building their own private, corporate clouds, according to ParaScale's CEO Sajai Krishnan.

Krishnan touts the PCS software as "the first shrink-wrapped, software-only cloud storage platform." Competing cloud platforms such as EMC's Atmos, for example, are attached to hardware, he says.

"Ours is not the model that typically comes to mind when you think cloud," says Krishnan. "The PCS software offers immense scale-out without having any choke points and uses commodity hardware, making it affordable."

The ParaScale Cloud Storage software version 1.2 is available now and can be downloaded from ParaScale's website. Pricing is based on the physical capacity within the cloud with deployments starting in North America at a list price of $1.05/GB. The first 4TB of capacity, however, is free of charge.

Once you hit 5TB, the base software is $5,250, with a high availability option priced at an additional $250/TB.